Comment by yunyu

Comment by yunyu 2 days ago

What are legitimate sources in your definition? Should physicians be expected to spend all their free time reading every single study in every medical journal or conference, even for niche areas that they don't usually encounter? Should the average diabetic/arthritic patient need to obsessively pore over academic reports to stay informed about their condition? Should advertisers be banned from sponsoring journals or conferences? This is an extremely ill informed line of reasoning.

michaelt 2 days ago

Doctors should learn about new drugs the traditional way - physically attractive drug company reps taking them out for expensive dinners and gifting them branded golf equipment.

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yunyu 2 days ago

My favorite form of definitely-not-advertising :)

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wat10000 2 days ago

I don’t know what counts as legitimate sources. I’ll let the professionals figure that one out.

> Should advertisers be banned from sponsoring journals or conferences?

It baffles me that you apparently think this is some kind of zinger. Yes!

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ghaff 2 days ago

Journals less commonly but pretty much every conference out there of any scope is sponsored by companies. In fact, absent sponsors, very few conferences would exist other than small volunteer-run ones.

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- wat10000 2 days ago
  
  If attendees aren’t willing to pay the full cost then maybe the conference isn’t providing enough value and we’re better off without it.
  
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  ghaff 2 days ago
  
  People (and their companies in many cases) have limited budgets. I do pay out of my pocket for some conferences, and conference organizers and (previously) employers in other cases. You're probably not going to convince me that I'm better off sitting at a desk than getting out and collaborating with people at an event from time to time. For that matter, why should companies sponsor open source projects? If they're that valuable, individuals should just pay for them I guess.
  
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yunyu 2 days ago

Got it. So you want attention to be controlled by the whims of academic/government/publishing bureaucrats or black-box ranking algorithms who are the arbitrators of legitimacy. I can't say I agree with that opinion, but different strokes for different folks.

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- wat10000 2 days ago
  
  I’m very confused. Why would “black-box ranking algorithms” be on the no advertising side?
  Medicine has a pretty good system for getting knowledge out to doctors as far as I can tell. I fail to see how advertising contributes to this in any way. Banning advertising is the opposite of controlling attention.
  I’d like a total ban on all advertising, but I at least see some merits in the discovery argument for consumer goods even if I don’t agree with it. But saying advertisement is necessary so doctors can find out about new treatments? I hope this is just subtle satire, because, what?
  
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  yunyu 2 days ago
  
  > Medicine has a pretty good system for getting knowledge out to doctors as far as I can tell.
  Yes, it does - it’s called advertising. In the US, the average promotional spend per physician exceeds $20k/yr. As a result, a lot more patients are able to quickly benefit from new medications like Dupixent or Ozempic as a result of wider awareness.
  Suppose we banned Google ads and you are searching for a plumber. You are now entirely at the whims of whoever designs the ranking algorithm on Google/the Yellow Pages, who has nothing at stake here. Meanwhile, advertisers have to bid for your attention - making them at least somewhat aligned with your buying intent.
  The same applies for doctors searching for state of the art diabetes treatments. It’s hard to say that relying on a fuzzy notion of “legitimacy” (or entrenched status-quo cliques) is a more fair system.
  
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